Here are some tib-bits from Ricky's posts over on the Traditional Muzzleloading Forum It is rather long, my apologies if I am breaking any rules reposting
02-16-09 23:24 PM - Post#681669
In response to grzrob
OK Thanks Jethro!!!!! Now the story of the picture.
This was early in my research about 3 years ago.
The backwards hat is not a fashion statement! You will notice the hat has a solid back no open space for the snap. This is to keep the heat off my fore head! I later found out that the only usefull purpose for a tri corn hat it to deflect the heat off your head! You do not want a wide brim hat to reflect the heat pouring out of the breach in a clockwise motion! I have since learned that a wide brim can be used if it is pulled down close to your eyebrows! The heat will not burn you but it is HOT!
You will also notice the orange cone of fire pouring out of the muzzle. The Ferguson shoots an undersized ball so the gas will pour out around the ball before it exits the barrel. The Ferguson had very deep groves. The ball just barely rides
in the deep groves. This gives a place for the fouling to gather. As a result I have shot my Ferguson up to 48 rounds without fouling up the bore. Round 48 is just as accurate as round 1.
Three times I have gone to the range with just 48 balls! One of these days I will try over 50 rounds! This fine picture was taken by my Friend
and Ferguson Rifle research cohort Bryan Brown.
You can also see most of the powder flask I made
for the rifle. Most of the time I am demonstrating the Ferguson Rifle I am in proper 18th century garb. None of the pictures I have in proper costume are near this good! This is me in my native costume. If I was not shooting the Ferguson my hat would not be on backwards!!!
You folks are in for it now, Jethro done showed this cave man how to post pictures!
02-17-09 10:07 AM - Post#681783
In response to MSW
If you can adjust to the hold under sight picture
of a rifle with the fixed sight at 200 yards, it is very accurate. To hit a small gong at 40 yards
I have to hold about 10 inches under the target.Of course this weapon was designed to hit man sized targets, not small gongs. Due to the short chamber of my rifle the fixed sight impacts at 160 yards. The leaf sight is pretty much dead on at 300 yards. It is perfect for 18th century open field warfare. Taking out soldiers at 200 yards sharpshooters taking out cannon crews at 300 yards. Ferguson placed his rifles in the British Light Infantry who did not fight in the open field.
On the 48 rounds the rifle was still cooking when I ran out of ball ( at 48 rounds )
Twice I have been to events where I did a 10 round live fire demonstration. I then loaded and
let 20 folks fire the rifle. After this I would take the rifle on an 18 round woods walk! No matter how I shuffle these numbers I always come up with 48! I hope to get my act together and break the 48 barrier this year. I can't load any of my muzzle loaders 48 times without cleaning
a couple of times during the span. 48 accurate shots without cleaning ain't bad for the 18th century! I will drag out my camera and Ferguson and take some close ups of the screw breach.
02-17-09 22:38 PM - Post#682128
In response to Hawken12
It has a real dark oil stain like the originals. That was me at the Spring Shoot last year. The two fellows below me kind of aiming up hill were shooting at a pig silly-wet at 300 yards! I had hoped to be able to move a couple of the 4 foot bears out to 300 but this did not come to pass.
The pigs were about a foot tall and 2:1/2 feet long. We did not actually hit the pig but most of the shots would have hit the bigger bear target.
The fellow with the blue shirt missed the pig by an inch or two low! We are talking about shooting
a round ball, from a flintlock with a military trigger pull, offhand at 300 yards! In the 45 minutes of time I had to work with we shot about 38 rounds before the clock ran down. One of the modern shooters watching the demo noticed that during the string of shots we had fired over the 45 minutes, we did not clean the rifle even once!
I doubt I will be doing this at Friendship again
There is just no good place to set up my demonstration at Friendship. If I take the Ferguson to Friendship I will just shoot it behind the blockhouse one afternoon. Just for grins.
02-18-09 11:45 AM - Post#682292
In response to grzrob
I forgot the important part, melt the substance in a small cup and dip your cleaned breach threads
in the wax. I ususually prop up the breach, top
side down on a paper plate or slab of clean wood
if at an out door event.
02-18-09 18:51 PM - Post#682450
In response to grzrob
The story is not over yet! After I went to the range with the tallow and proper .615 ball, after a few shots the bore would foul up and the accuracy would go down the tubes. Mind you that in 1776 Patrick Ferguson shot close to 50 rounds
in his famous demonstration in front of the King.
So my work was not over. I got to thinking.....back in the day when I loaded lead bullets in my handgun cartridges, the lead bullets always had a grease ring or two to keep the bore slick and avoid rapid lead fouling.
You can't run naked lead balls down a rifled barrel with out grease of some kind.
So the next time I melted the tallow for the breach, I took a pair of tweezers and dipped the .615 balls in the tallow also. When I went back to the range the next time, with this tallowed breach and ball, my Ferguson Rifle
became the 1776 assault rifle just like Ferguson's rifle back then. That is when the fun started. I have dipped the balls in pure bees wax
and this works pretty good.
When I post tomorrow I will discuss the most pain in the arse aspect of the Ferguson rifle!!!
02-19-09 17:00 PM - Post#682875
In response to Hawken12
Well folks I have mentioned the high points ( rate of fire, accuracy and the non fouling ) so just to be fair I will now show you the warts!!!!
After I had the shooting part figured out, then I Had to figure out how to clean the dang thing! Dang near all of the shine goes off the penny when you get to this stage! Black powder, lead and tallow combine for the nastiest fouling you will see in a gun!
When I got the Ferguson home I went to the internet and typed in Ferguson Rifle. This one fellow said to clean it using solvent soaked patches ( about a 100 ) and 45 minutes of elbow grease. He was dead right about the patches and grease. So for the next two months I tested different cleaning methods. All kinds of vile chemical concoctions ( I wished this site had spell check! ) I got the time down to 20 minutes and 50 patches. I could not imagine a whole company of riflemen having to clean in this way.
There had to be a better way. I was at King's Mountain national Park with Bryan and he suggested using boiling hot water. I had used water before but not boiling hot. The Ferguson Rifle's barrel is held in by captive barrel wedges. It is easy to remove the barrel take out the single lock screw, the tang screw and the forward sling mount screw. Then you run into another problem. When you take the barrel out of a muzzle loader you just grab the muzzle and lift it out of the stock. If you do this with a Ferguson you will split the stock in two due to the breach that runs all the way through the rifle. The best way I have found is to turn the rifle up side down with the barrel resting on your knee. Gently tap the breach with a wooden mallet and the barrel will fall out of the stock.
On you lap ( you should be setting down for this! )
So I took out the barrel and rested the muzzle on a flat board and the tang screw in a notch on a tree. Bryan boiled up a half gallon of water So I poured the very hot water down the barrel from the breach end. The first lesson I learned is how fast a cold barrel will heat up when you are pouring boiling water through it!
When the water first exits the muzzle it is the nastiest looking black mess you have ever seen!
You keep pouring and the water will come out clean! I have the breach and lock on another flat board and I pour the super hot water on them. I also have to level the barrel and pour down the breach. The lock cleans right up, the barrel will be good but you still have to wire brush the screw breach itself and run tight patches through the breach itself to get the gunk out of there.
A few solvent soaked patches will clean the barrel now. Mopst everything is ready for the Balistol now except....The actual breach plug of the rifle ends at the back of the screw breach.
I do not understand why they did not have the actual breach tapped at the same time they tapped the screw breach threads. They did not so the actual breach is flat kind of in a shallow hole.
You will need to have a small 45 degree tool and clean this area because it is subject to draw rust! So now Thanks to Bryan, I can clean the Ferguson in 15 minutes and about 15 patches.
You guys still want one?
?
So I have showed the positive and negitive, why did the British not support Patrick Ferguson
rifle program? You can't use the excuse "because the British did not use rifles in there battle plan".
The British had around 1200 model 1776 Tower rifles over here. 800 of them were delivered before the first Ferguson was produced.
The Jaeger riflemen had over a thousand of there own rifles and some issue rifles.
When the British won a battle or skirmish, The captured American rifles were given to Loyalist
Rifle companies.
So the British did use rifles.
My thoughts on why the Ferguson was not adopted for the British.
1. Cost. The Ferguson rifle cost 4 pounds to make. A Brown Bess cost 1 pound. They had bean counters in 1776 also.
2. The Ferguson rifle has a weak stock where the massive breach passes through the wood. All of the original Ferguson rifles in US museums have repairs in this area. Ferguson Ordinance rifle # 2
the one he demonstrated in front of the king, the one now in the tower of London, had a repair in this area. 18th century soldiers were very rough with their firelocks. When in formation the British liked to slam the butts of their muskets on the ground to make the ground shake! They were
trained to used their muskets as a club, battering ram and bayonet paltform. The Ferguson Rifle was too delicate for the Army! I have been shooting mine for several years now. I treat it like I treat my squirrel gun!
3. Tallow. Each rifle had to have tallow on the threads and ball to operate. The vision of Ferguson running through the British camp the night before Brandywine scrounging all of the tallow he could find, still troubles me. Something is wrong with this picture!
4. Cleaning. 1/2 gallon of boiling water per rifle. When Patrick Ferguson started this project
he wanted 200 rifles for his unit. When Lord Townsend seen the prototype rifle he suggest they buy hundreds of them. Let say Lord Townsend's plan was adopted. Lets say they produced 500 Ferguson Breach loading rifles. That adds uo to 250 gallons of boiling water to clean these rifles.
250 gallons of boiling water in the 18th century?
5. The breach opens up after one full turn. If you slip up and make two turns the breach falls out on the ground. You now have a pike. The breaches were hand fitted to the rifle, they were not interchangable.
This pretty much concludes the information in my article, and is by far my longest post! I have to go rest my two index fingers now!!
